In addition, it's got a webOS operating system that's well-received, full of function, and most importantly, should be easy for developers to build applications for, as it's based on .

But if HP, like RIM before it, wants to play Apple's game of selling glossy consumer products instead of making the tablet all about business and getting consumers that way, it's making a mistake.

I don't think the company's focus is entirely off the business opportunity; indeed, the executives who work with its partner base have been strongly promoting the TouchPad as a business product for months, and the company is one of the first to make its products readily available through the distributors from which its many resellers purchase products. CEO Léo Apotheker is constantly talking up the TouchPad as a business device, and hinting at a broad, cloud-based strategy that will tie together the tablet, applications, and enterprise IT into one neat package.

But as long as "there's an app for that" iPad and not the TouchPad, it doesn't matter who's promoting the device, or how many Flash Websites are all but useless on the iPad.

Between Apotheker's vision and its own , there are signs that HP recognizes this, but its competitors aren't sitting still either.